The Priory is the most elegant hotel of my acquaintance to date: it knows what it is, but it manages to avoid being in the least self-conscious. There is something mockable about the mobile twigs-on-strings sculpture behind the front desk at the Graves 601, or about the three 18th-century washerwomen printed on the card that invites you to reduce your washing requirements at Hazlitt’s. There is something overdone about the cute themes of the Kimpton hotel chain, something outright vulgar about the logo stamped into the sand of the ashtrays at the Chesterfield Mayfair.

The Priory has all the luxury and personality of those properties but greater restraint and confidence. (I say this with a little pain, because I love the Graves and have stayed there over and over. But it is brash and childish next to the Priory.)

The building is as the name suggests, an old priory building converted to the purposes of a hotel. In the former cloister, the pillars remain but not the roof, and one may take one’s coffee or pastis overlooking a knot garden where the hedges enclose a wild growth of herbs and flowers. Vines grow up the walls and overhead. Here and there are walls of the old building that no longer belong to rooms, or a few steps of a spiral staircase that now goes nowhere, and yet it isn’t ostentatiously ruined, not a museum or a theme park. There is new building as well, an unabashed 60s or 70s construction with tiled floors and big airy rooms and balconies that look out over the perfectly turquoise pool.

The decoration follows the same principles: the furniture is sometimes heavy carved wood and gilt mirrors, sometimes sleek-lined and modern. Eclectic chandelier crystals hang from a sort of track lighting over the reception desk. The bathrooms (at least in the modern building, the only one I tried) are vast, with separate tubs and showers, double sinks, uncompromising whiteness.

When you first come, the staff may ask your room number when taking orders for drinks and food, but soon even this stops: they recognize you, and you can go anywhere and order whatever you like, finish and wander away again — coffee in the cloister, drinks by the pool, breakfast in the restaurant — without any discussion of prices.

This lack of fuss, combined with the tranquility of the surroundings, make the public spaces more than usually inviting. I often feel just a bit out of place in hotel lobbies and the like: they are not one’s own space, they are showy, they have all the restfulness of a train station. In the Priory there is more the sense of being a guest at a very comfortable and luxurious home, and except for the little question of expense could imagine spending days and days in the gardens, reading and writing, drinking strong drinks from small cups.

It is especially worth sitting by the pool or in the cloister in the late afternoon also because these offer the best view of the day’s chief spectacle: the preparation of the restaurant. The restaurant begins to serve at around 7:30 in the evening and for at least an hour before this the waitstaff prepares, all clad in black suits, some of them very professional and august-looking in pin-stripes and played by Rupert Everett, the rest young trainees of just high-school age, coltishly imitating the importance of their seniors. The outdoor tables are dressed in their linens and cutlery, places laid for the reservations, candles arranged (but not lighted, as it is still very bright out in summer). Eventually guests from the hotel appear, and other guests who have come just for dinner, strolling up the vine-shaded walkway from the parking lot. A scent of rosemary rises from the sun-warmed bushes and the cicadas sing until the jazz band takes over.

Again what is extraordinary is the sense of ease: many places are expensive, luxurious, stylish or ostentatious, but few manage to be so grand and so welcoming at the same time. As for the food, that requires its own article.

In the late evening a robot crawls the bottom of the pool to clean it, and the sound of the cicadas dies away.